But for whatever reason, I never got all that excited about the prospect of a series of movies about The Hobbit. It isn't because I don't love the book. The novel is great in its own right, existing more as a prelude to LotR rather than as a prequel. The Hobbit is our introduction to Middle Earth, and that introduction is wonderful. Further, it has one of the great opening lines of literature: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." And as a kid I loved the animated Hobbit. But I was still having trouble getting excited about a movie done the same way as the LotR films. Perhaps it is because the novel is almost episodic, rather than a singular story, and such a structure does not lend itself to interesting movie making. Or perhaps it is because Peter Jackson announced that he was making a total of THREE movies out of a rather small book, and that just seemed like overkill. No matter how you cut it, I just felt like this effort was going to be more cash-in rather than a reverent approach to the source material. To put it another way, my impression of seeing the production of LotR was that they were making movies to please fans of the book. But my impression of the production of The Hobbit was they were making movies to please fans of the LotR movies.
So was my impression right or wrong? Was it a cash in, or a serious and reverent adaptation of a favorite book?
Turns out I was right, more or less. True, the style of writing in the novel is much lighter and playful than the novel The Lord of the Rings. So I expected the film of The Hobbit to be a bit more playful. But there was just something odd and wrong with how the film went about things. The dwarves would be serious at one moment, then everyone would make a joke about how fat Bomber was. What was great and lively dialogue in the book becomes somewhat tedious in the film. There was way too much exposition with less plot movement than necessary. Think of this: the film version of Fellowship was able to introduce us to the plot (not easy), then show several adventures and introduce scores of characters with tons of action without making a fan of the book feel that anything truly important to the plot was ignored (other than Tom Bombadil, but that's an argument for another day). Comparatively speaking, The Hobbit moves with the pacing of a glacier at times, and only gets about 5 chapters through a book that is half the size of Fellowship. There is just no reason why The Hobbit needed to be spread out to 3 films, except for the desire of studio bosses to make more money.
There were just a lot of little things that bugged me:
- Seriously, the orcs built a giant trap-door/false-floor into that cave in the off chance that travelers through the mountains just happened to stop in that place? A tad unrealistic, don't you think?
- People survive far too many long falls that should kill them.
- Speaking of falls, the one where they rode the bridge portion down the cliff in the goblin cave was just stupid.
- The fact that the great goblin landed 10 seconds or so after they did breaks all rules of physics.
- Peter Jackson seemed compelled to do things just like he did in LotR. Yes, the eagles get them from the trees, but did we really need to have Gandalf send a moth for them again? Seriously Pete, we need to AVOID the "been there, done that" feeling, not make it worse. And also, there is absolutely no way that moth had time to get to the eagles before the orcs would kill our heroes.
- At the end of the film the team can see the Lonely Mountain. This is of course impossible according to the geography of Middle Earth. Such a detail in the movie is another indication that they are not approaching this series with the same reverence they did with the first movies.
- Some of the battles somehow had a "video game" kind of feel to them.
- The stone giant bit in the mountains was great. Right up until they started riding the knees around. That was a big "Ok, that went much too far" moment.
- Overall, it just failed to produce a feeling of wonder.
- I loved how they were building bridges between this story and the LotR. They approached the story as a catalyst that gets everything rolling for the next films, and not just because of the ring.
- The scene that amounted to a council of Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf, and Saruman was great (for someone who loves the book's lore).
- The troll scene was more or less faithful and fun.
- The "Riddles in the Dark" was perfect. Except that it wasn't dark.
- It's always fun to see Gandalf back in action.
Overall we are not talking about a bad movie. The production level was high, and it was fun in parts (though boring in others). But it just seemed that the director was constantly saying to the audience "Remember this? You liked it before, here it is again!" Except it's never as good the second time.
Entertainment: 5/10
Artistic Value: 4/10
Technical Merit: 7/10
Overall: 5/10
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